


The Ace of Cups

by LisWrites



Category: Arthurian Mythology, Original Work
Genre: Action, Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26710123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LisWrites/pseuds/LisWrites
Summary: Writing prompt--Ever since you were born, you had the ability to see a marker on where any item is if people ask you to find it. However, once a friend jokingly asks you if you could find him the holy grail. You both laugh it off, but suddenly a mark appears 5 miles to the north of you.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So! After a while I'm back to this series. Pandemics really kill motivation, as it turns out. I've had to shift major gears with this project, but I'm ready to get this done. So, here it is. The Last Crusade 2.0. 
> 
> The original version can be found [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/LisWrites/comments/a1xn46/wp_ever_since_you_were_born_you_had_the_ability/)

**Prologue**

Here, there are things stranger than time and older than magic. Here there are things that should not be meddled with.  _ Hic sunt dracones _ . Here be dragons. Here are the wild and dangerous things that exist at the edges of the map, the edges of the world, the edges of reality. 

The cloaked man knew this well. He’d spent his life ensuring the veil was never lifted. Back when the world of magic and the world of humans had been one, chaos reigned. He wouldn’t allow that to happen again. 

The cloaked man fled across the frozen river. His breath caught in his throat. After all this time, he was finally running out of it. He pushed his way through the chunks of snow and ice that cleaved upward. On this early December night, there was only one other soul around. In the distance, the lights of the city twinkled against the pit-black sky. 

“Give it up,” called the man behind him. Despite the blistering cold, he wore only a light wool coat and scarf. Something much more fitting for fall, not a dark winter’s night at the edge of the far North. 

_ Never.  _ The cloaked man pushed forward. Onward, always onward. His knees threatened to give up—the stress and stunning cold pressed against his old joints. 

“You’re out of tricks, my old friend,” said the man. “You’re hurt—you can’t run forever.”

The cloaked man stopped. He was right. With a flourish, he swept the cloak back from his body and pulled the bundle out from under his arm. He pressed it against the snow and ice and whispered the words, urging the small package to melt through the ice. A hot knife cutting butter. And, behind it, the ice sealed itself over again. To the untrained eye, it would like as if nothing changed. 

His opponent chuckled. “You’re really losing it, aren’t you? She’ll be before the end of the week, you know. She’ll get it back as easily as you put it there.”

“After all this time, you still haven’t learned.” The cloaked man grinned. “She can’t get it if someone else finds it first.” 

The cloaked man pulled all the energy he could muster into his words. The power flowed, although not freely. It was a strained, choked thing. The last bits of magic in his system—it was going to take him a while to recover from this one.

With the turn of his hand, the cloaked man disappeared. Where he stood, only footprints remained on the snow-covered ice. The hollow wind blew through the valley and left the notes of a long-forgotten strangeness in its wake. 


	2. Chapter 2

The world was ending. Of that, I was nearly certain.

“Come on,” Art said, jabbing my arm. “Stop being overdramatic. It’s not the end of the world.”

I groaned, pulled the blanket over my head, and rolled toward the wall. My head felt heavy with a knot of nerves just under my forehead.

Art sighed. “Mark. Seriously. I’m going to leave without you.”

“Good! I told you not to come here in the first place.”

Suddenly, my warm nest of blankets was peeled away. The cold air shocked my skin. “Come on.”

Art frowned at me and folded his arms across his chest, all impatient. “I’d be a shitty friend if I left you to wallow in your self-pity while I partied.”

“You’re right. You would be.”

“I’m not missing on Lance’s party to mope around your dorm.”

I sighed. “I’m just not in the mood to be around a bunch of people right now.”

Art ran his hand through his blond hair, messing the strands up more than his usual messy-style already were. “Look.” He pulled the chair over from my desk and flopped down. “I know it sucks being dumped. I mean--I assume it does. I’ve never been dumped.”

“Fuck off.” I chucked my pillow at his head.

Art caught it. “But my point still stands! It sucks. There’s nothing I can do to change that.”

“You’re really good at these pep talks. Have you thought of being a motivational speaker?”

“My point is that it’s Sarah’s loss! You’re a great guy. There will be other girls who’d be lucky to have you. But you’re not gonna meet them if you’re lying in bed.

“And--girls aside--it’s the end of the semester. We’ve all been working hard these past few months, but you especially. Even without Sarah, you deserve a night to have some fun. Just relax and have a few drinks and celebrate the fact you survived another semester of uni. Tomorrow you can come to my place and we can commiserate over pizza and beers.”

I frowned. He did have a point. Occasionally, Art could make a strong argument. He had a way with words that could make you believe almost anything.

“Or we can hit the gym at six in the morning if that’s the sort of post-break-up look you’re wanting to go for.”

“Ugh. Fine.” I pushed myself up and wiped my hair away from my brow. It was a tangled and greasy mess.

Here was the thing--Sarah had dumped me yesterday. Sarah. She’d been my girlfriend since half-way through grade twelve, though we’d been friends all throughout high school. Just after New Year’s would be our two-year anniversary. Or, at least, it would’ve been.

If she hadn’t dumped me via text. _Hey, Mark. This isn’t working._

I turned over the words in my head. Yeah, it had been tough doing long distance, but it wasn’t that long of a distance. She was down in Calgary, I was here in Edmonton. We’d call each other all the time. We’d both taken weekend trips to see each other. We’d met in the middle, too. A three-hour drive between us wasn’t the worst thing ever.

At least it wasn’t for me.

Sarah, apparently, saw it differently.

I rubbed my eyes. The fluorescent light of my dorm burned my retinas.

“Good. Let’s get going.” Art walked over to my closet and yanked the door open. Normally, I would’ve balked at this blatant disregard for my boundaries but when it came to Art, that line was long since gone.

We’d been roommates in our first year of university. There’s only so much privacy you can hope for in a room the size of a shoebox.

This year, I was lucky enough to snag a much sought after single dorm. It was cramped for space, that was true, but the rent was cheaper than anywhere else and I didn’t have to listen to Art’s snores while I tried to sleep. The fire alarms did still go off on a biweekly basis, though.

Art, on the other hand, and moved off-campus. To a nice apartment in a high-rise downtown.

I had to admit that it did make me a little jealous when I was heating up mac and cheese on a hot plate while he had a fully stocked kitchen. But Art’s family was rich; he didn’t have to worry about money. Hell, he lived in residence in our first year ‘for the experience’.

“Here,” Art said, tossing a button-down denim shirt at me. I didn’t catch it. It smacked into my face. “Go shower. I wanna leave in twenty.”

“Fine.” I untangled myself from my bed.

As I was heading to the door, Art winced and clutched his side. “You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He nodded and stretched. “Side-stitch. I think I ran too far today.”

I rolled my eyes. Seriously? It was just my luck that I had to be surrounded by a bunch of jocks. My high-school self would’ve never believed it.

* * *

Half an hour later, Art and I were in his car, heading towards Lance’s place. It was only a few blocks really, but it was too cold to walk. The wind was blistering and it had dumped half a foot of snow yesterday--most of the sidewalks were still buried in snowdrifts.

Besides, the sky was pit black. I shouldn’t have been surprised. It’s not like this was unusual for early December, but it seemed strange to see the world this dark. Back in the summer, I’d been camping in the mountains and the world never shifted this dark. Even well past midnight, there would still be inky blue tones in the sky. I guessed that was just part of living where we did. Dark winters. But bright long summer days to offset them. Sunsets that would last for hours.

Sunsets you could watch with the person you loved. Like Sarah. We’d packed her civic and drove up to the mountains and sat and watched the sun sink while we drank warm white wine and roasted hot dogs over the crackling fire.

Her honey-blonde air and brown eyes caught the light of both the sunset and fire.

“Mark.”

I snapped my attention toward Art. “What?”

“I know you’re thinking about her again,” he said as he pulled into a free spot on Lance’s street.

“I am not.”

“You are. But try to forget her for a few hours okay? This is a party.”

I opened the door and stepped out of the car--right into a pile of ploughed snow. I felt a chunk slide inside my shoe and the burning cold pressed against my ankle. I shuddered. “Fine.”

“Just a few hours. Alright? Don’t think. Just enjoy.”

I pushed my hands inside my pockets and nodded.

“Give it a few weeks and you won’t even be thinking of her. I promise.”

At that, I scoffed. It was going to be hard not to think of Sarah over Christmas. I already had a present for her and everything--I’d have to see if Aritzia would accept returns. That scarf was fucking expensive.

“You ready?” Art shot me a glance as we reached the top of the steps down to Lance’s basement suite. He was giving me an out. As much as Art liked to push, he always stopped before he crossed the line and became pushy.

But I nodded. As much as I wasn’t quite in the mood for a party, the thought of spending the night in my dorm while my friends had a good time was even more depressing. “Yeah. Let’s do this.”

* * *

The strip of LED lights Lance had strung up around his room at the place where the walls met the ceiling pulsed from purple to green to red to yellow and back to purple again. It made my head hurt, a little bit.

Some had also plugged their phone into a speaker and the frame of the house shook with the beat. It was a good thing that the family who lived upstairs had gone skiing for the weekend (according to Lance) or I’m sure we would’ve had the cops knocking on the door with a noise complaint.

“Here,” Art said, shoving a red solo cup in my face. “I borrowed some rum.”

“Borrowed?”

Art shrugged. “Lance won’t miss it.”

I took the cup and sniffed it. The strong scent singed my nose. “Oh, god. How much of this is Coke?”

“Look, I’m not drinking tonight. If I’m only having pop, I figure one of us should be having some fun.”

I sighed and took a sip. It stung my throat on the way down, but I couldn’t deny that I was looking forward to getting a pleasant buzz going to push away all the thoughts in my head.

Before I could say much more to Art, one of Lance’s friends from the football team dragged me over to the table that was set up for a game of beer pong.

“Come on,” he said. I couldn’t remember his name. Tristan, maybe? “I need a partner.” He stared at me expectantly.

I shrugged and downed the drink in my cup. Why not? “Alright.”

He hollered and whooped and pulled me into the game.

The thing about parties is that you sometimes have to let yourself go with the flow, even if it’s against your better judgement. I didn’t really want to be here—I would’ve been content to sulk around my dorm room. But I was here now and I wasn’t about to be the sad sack who mopped in the corner the whole time. Even if my heart wasn’t in it, I had to at least try.

* * *

The party pushed on into the night. Granted, that was hard to tell since it was already pitch black when we arrived. The buzz I’d wanted had grown into a full-blown warm headrush. I was just starting to wonder where Lance had gone—I knew he was perpetually running late, but this was his own pArt for fuck’s sake—when I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder.

If my reflexes hadn’t been so dulled, I would’ve jumped.

Next to me stood Lance, wearing a flannel of his usual combo of t-shirt and jeans. His dark hair was a touch shorter than the last time I’d seen him. “Mark,” he shouted over the music into my ear. “You gotta help me.”

I blinked. I wasn’t exactly in ‘helping’ mode. “What is it?”

“So last week, Gwen was at this market off Whyte Ave, right? And she saw this bracelet and she thought it would suit me so she bought it for me, right?”

“Sure.”

“And it was really sweet and all, cause that’s the first thing she’s gotten for me. I mean like aside from a few coffees and that dinner at Dorinku—which is really good, by the way. You gotta go there sometime,” Lance rambled on, his words blending together probably as both part of his nerves and the drinks he’d had.

“Lance.”

“Sorry. My point is that I can’t find it.” He looked at me expectantly. “The bracelet, that is.”

I nodded. “I got you.”

* * *

In truth, I don’t know when I realized I had the gift. I don’t know if I ever did realize I was gifted—not consciously, anyway. Instead, at some point, I figured out that others couldn’t see what I did. It was a strange sort of thing. Imagine realizing that no one else could see the colour purple and I think that’s as close as I can get to explaining things.

But it works like this—I can find things. Little trinkets. Misplaced books. It comes in handy when I need to find a car in a giant lot.

I just picture the item in my head as much as I can, close my eyes, and tell myself (or someone tells me) to find it. And then there’s a little glowing trail that leads me to it. Nice and neat and easy.

It doesn’t work with everything, though. There are rules. Boundaries. I’m not some superhero.

More than anything, I don’t know totally how it works. I don’t know where it came from. But yeah. That’s it.

And tonight, I scrunched my eyes shut and pictured Lance’s bracelet as he described it to me.

“Can you find it?”

I opened my eyes to a little golden line that wound its way from the kitchen to the couch. I followed it forward and tugged the cushion off. Sure enough, the ropey bracelet was sandwiched against the back. “Here you go.”

Lance pulled me into a bear hug. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“I know.”

“I owe you one.”

“I know.”

Lance tied the bracelet around his wrist and ran his hands through his hair. “Gwen should be here soon. She said she’d come as soon as she got off work.”

“I can’t wait to meet her.” I smiled. Gwen was Lance’s new girlfriend. I’d never met her, but we seemed to have a good chunk of common acquaintances—probably because Gwen’s roommate was on the track team.

Lance nodded. He seemed tense. “She’s great,” he said.

And the party drifted on again.

* * *

Gwen arrived sometime after midnight. She was a server, apparently. And after Lance introduced us she was quick to say that after the night she’d had, she needed a drink.

“I’ll go get you one,” Lance said, leaving the two of us alone.

“So,” Gwen said. Her blonde hair was cropped to her shoulders and half pinned back to show off her sharp cheekbones. “You know Lance from school?”

I nodded. “I lived across the hall from him last year.”

“Oh, lucky you. Could you hear him blasting terrible music through walls?”

I chuckled. “Nah, my own roommate snored loud enough to drown that out.”

At that, Gwen laughed. “When I hear stories like that, I don’t regret my choice to live at home. Saves money and I don’t have to deal with the headache of roommates. Some of the horror stories are just unbelievable.”

“That’s true, for sure. I heard on the floor above us some guy actually threw his roommate's alarm clock at his head ‘cause it kept going off. Poor guy was walking around with a black-eye for weeks.” I took a sip of my drink. “But Art wasn’t a bad roommate. Snoring aside, he’s a great guy.”

“Oh, your roommate was Art?” A faint flush rose in Gwen’s cheeks. “I didn’t realize.”

“Yeah, d’you know him—”

Before I could finish my question, Lance was back at our sides. He handed her a red solo cup with liquor so strong the smell burnt _my_ nose.

“Gwen,” he said in a mock whisper. “Did you know Mark is magic?”

I frowned. “We don’t have to get into that.”

“No, no. It’s true.” Lance nodded and his hair bobbed with him. He might’ve had more to drink than I’d thought. And, at one point, he’d popped out back with a few of the other guys and some blunts. Usually, no one mentioned my special talent. It had even taken me a long time to tell them about my ability—I was terrified they’d think I was insane.

“Mark can find anything you ask him to,” Lance continued. “It’s magic.”

“It’s true,” I said and chuckled uncomfortably. “I’ve never lost my keys. The guys always hated me for it, until they realized they could use it to their advantage. Then I was finding everyone’s wallets and phones and shit. It’s a neat pArt trick, I’m not going to lie.”

“Well, let’s see it then,” Gwen said. She crossed her arms in front of her and raised her eyebrow. She didn’t believe me.

“Give me something to find,” I said. Gwen seemed nice. I didn’t want her to think we were having a joke at her expense.

“My will to live,” Lance joked.

I rolled my eyes. “How many times are you gonna make that joke?”

“Until people stop laughing.”

Gwen looked between me and Lance. She didn’t even flinch as she took a drink. “Is this something you do everytime one of the guys has a new girlfriend? Try and make her look dumb?” Despite her accusation, she didn’t sound angry. She sounded like she was playing along. Maybe Lance had finally found a keeper.

“He’s being serious, actually. Comes in handy.” Lance sipped his own drink. The music rose— someone had cranked the volume. He leaned into Gwen and yelled in her ear. “What’s something you’re looking for?”

“A million dollars,” she smirked.

“Not that either. Something _specific_ ,” I laughed and sipped the beer I had been nursing for a while now. There was still a good third of the cup left, now warm and flat.

“A room for those two,” Lance gestured at Tristan and Izzy, who were drunkenly making out in the dark corner of his living room. He then scrunched his nose, probably as he remembered _his_ room was the nearest. “On second thought, maybe not.”

Gwen locked her eyes on me. “Find that boy who went missing last week. Logan Fisher, the one who was last seen leaving his school with his grandfather.”

I frowned at the request. _That took a depressing turn_. “Doesn’t work for people. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

Gwen shook her head. “You’re lying to me,” she said, “and I’m making myself look like an idiot.”

“No, it's real, I promise.”

“Okay. Find the Holy Grail.”

Lance’s laugh turned to cough as his drink caught in his throat. “That’s a good one,” he wheezed.

I laughed too.

Until a warm pain blossomed at the base of my skull. My whole world shifted; golden light blanched my eyes like a supernova. “Shit.” I dropped the warm beer over Lance’s carpet.

“Hey, what the hell—”

I could see it. A faint glow hovered in front of my eyes. It bounced for a second, then traced a path out the front door and up the street.

It couldn’t be right. It didn’t make any sense. “The Holy Grail is fourteen kilometres from here.”

“Come on man,” Lance said. He grabbed a wad of paper towels and bent down to start dabbing at the spilled beer on the carpet. “I’m never gonna get my damage deposit back,” he grumbled.

“Lance.” My heart pounded and my vision tunnelled. Was this really happening? I grabbed his wrist and knelt down and met his eyes. “I’m serious. I wouldn’t joke about this.”

Lance paused for a minute. He left the wet splotch on the carpet alone and stood up. “You sure?”

“Positive.”

“Damn,” he muttered to himself. He turned. “Hey Art?”

From across the room, Art turned around. He looked annoyed that his attention was being drawn away from a pretty brunette. “What?”

Lance pushed his way through the small crowd and Gwen and I followed in the path he cleared. “You’re not drinking tonight, right? You were gonna drive home?”

Art huffed. “Well, yeah, but I don’t see what this has to do with—”

“Grab your keys,” Lance told him. “Mark here thinks he knows where the Holy Grail is. We’re gonna go find it.”

“We are?” I asked. The music thumped on and the chatter rang above it. My head pulse again with a sharp pain.

Lance rolled his eyes. “No, we’re gonna just ignore this and act like it never happened.”

Art looked between us. “And what? You expect me to lead you into this?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” Lance grinned and turned to Gwen and me. “Let’s go find that cup.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Seatbelts.”

“What? Art, we don’t have time—”

“It’s my car. You asked me —well, you  _ told _ me, but still. Wear a seatbelt.”

Lance slammed the buckle in aggressively. And he missed. Defeated, he fumbled with it until it clicked into place. “You happy?”

“Very,” Art said. He shifted his Audi into drive and pulled away from Lance’s rented basement suite. The frost formed against the windows of Arthur’s car—save where I’d hastily scraped it away from the windshield—but his engine started without a problem. 

Hence why Lance asked him in the first place; his old beater took three tries to start and didn’t like to run any time the weather dipped below -15. Lance took the bus most days.

“You’re fucking with me, right?” Gwen asked again, for good measure. “How the hell would the Holy Grail end up in the middle of Canada?”

From the passenger seat, I turned around to look at her. She crossed her arms in front of her and leaned back, clearly guarded. Her eyes were a little unfocused, but then again, I’m sure mine were too. We’d been drinking and smoking, and on top of it all we were in the thick of finals. The stress of those alone were bound to twist our brains’ sense of normality. “She really does have a point.”

Next to me, Art threw me a sharp glare. “ _ You _ were the one who claimed to have found it.”

“I mean, I think I did,” I muttered. In front of me, I could see that glowing light still. But knowing where something ended up didn’t mean I knew how it got there. For all I knew, I could’ve found a piece of plastic garbage that had been sitting around since Halloween. 

But there was something nagging me, deep in my gut. It didn’t feel fake. It really didn’t. Even though I had no way to know for sure. 

I turned back to Gwen, who was eyeing Lance, probably half-hoping he’d at least have the sense to tell Art to pull over if he thought he was gonna puke. “We aren’t messing with you,” I promised her. “Lance worries enough about his place when he’s actually  _ there _ . He wouldn’t be here unless it was real.”

Lance nodded and put his hands to his face. “I’m never getting that security deposit back.”

“You already weren’t,” Art shot back as he rounded a corner so quickly that I had to reach for the door to stop myself from spilling into the consol. 

“Don’t be dramatic,” Art said. 

“You’re clearly living out your missed fantasy of being a formula one racer.”

“I’m not going that fast.”

“This is Edmonton, not Monte Carlo.” 

Gwen laughed. I glanced up to the rearview; she leaned against Lance and nestled her head into the nook of his shoulder.

Art cleared his throat and tightened his grip and jerked his eyes forward. He had been looking in the mirror too.  _ Great _ . It wasn’t Lance’s fault—Art never told anyone he liked Gwen. Well, anyone besides me. And even at that, he hadn’t so much as told me as he had insulated it. If I’d been a worse deductive, I never would’ve pieced it all together. 

But I hardly needed anything else to deal with at the moment. And I hardly needed to think about love—I swallowed the lump in my throat and told myself to  _ not _ think about my ex. Absolutely not. Nope. 

I had bigger things to worry about—like the glowing trail of light in front of me. “Take the next left,” I told Art. 

He nodded and swung around the bend at a reasonable pace this time. “How much further?”

“Not far.” The trail didn’t go on much further. It’s hard to explain; I could see it, winding on through the streets. I knew where it ended. Like an advanced sort of Google Maps wired into my brain. The lamest superpower ever, if you asked me. 

But tonight it was paying off. We weren’t looking for car keys, or a lost ring, or a remote that slipped somewhere behind the couch. This was it. The Holy Grail. 

Just a few more minutes and we’d have our hands on it. And then after that...“What the fuck are we gonna do with the Holy Grail?” 

No one answered. The question hung in the air, the only nose the blast of the warm hair and the low-hum of  _ Santa Baby  _ on the radio. 

Until Gwen burst out laughing, clear and high. Lance followed, then me, then Art. We were half crying, doubled over in ourselves. It shouldn’t have been so fun, but buzzed and high as we were, anything could’ve been hilarious. 

“I think I’ll put it on my shelf,” Lance said, “we can bring it out the next time we have a party.”

“I’ll set the table with it when my mom comes around for dinner,” I added.

Art cracked up. “Use it in beer pong.” 

“Sell it on Ebay,” offered Gwen. 

Through my strangled laugh, I told Art to turn again. 

“Okay, okay, pull over here,” I said. 

Art did. He jerked his car up to the curb—thought it was hard to tell exactly where the curb was on account of the snow piled up along the edges—and we got out of the car, still giddy. The back of my neck prickled with excitement; it was as though an electric spark lingered in the air. 

As I looked around, I realized where we were. I’d been so focused on following the glowing light that I hadn’t been paying proper attention to the actual location aside from the turns in the road. 

But we were at a park, down in the river valley. We’d been here a few times before. Last summer we played slo-pitch on the diamond behind us. Last summer, when Sarah was here visiting me, we’d biked on the winding path through the trees with a broad view of bend in the river.

I was saved from my thoughts about Sarah—a gust of wind picked up the dry snow from the field and tossed it over us. Gwen shivered. Even Art swore at the bitterness. My nose ran; the breath I sucked in hurt my lungs. How was it possible the world was so cold? I’d barely been out of the car for a minute and I could already feel the tip of my nose tingle and my hands ached even as I stuffed them deeper in my coat pockets. 

I didn’t care. “This way,” I called and waved them all along. We trudged through the dusty snow, down the hill and through a smattering of bare trees, to the frozen bank of the river.

And as I looked ahead, I saw where the marker ended. “Shit.”

Art shot me a look. “What’s wrong?”

Carefully, I stepped forward until my toes were at the place where the ice met the ground. I kicked at the edge. The ice didn’t crack under my boot. Not even a splinter raced outward underfoot.

“It’s underwater.” Art said. He wasn’t guessing. He was staring at the spot where the marker ended, about a quarter of the way across the river.

“You can see it?” Lance asked.

Art raised his eyebrow. “You can’t?”

I cocked my head and stared at the spot. It had to be down there, but between the dump of snow and thick ice, it was impossible to see. Besides, the chunks of ice that shored up on the bank gave me the worst vibes—I kept thinking back to the failed Franklin expedition in the arctic. There was something about the darkness of the night, the bitter air, and the silence that seemed to whisper:  _ just go on and try, I dare you.  _ Was I up for that challenge? 

Gwen shivered and cozied up to Lance. “Well, no one’s found it for two-thousand years,” she said. “What are the chances it’ll be snapped up by morning? We could come back with some real winter clothes. My dad used to icefish. I could bring his drill.” It seemed the cold had sobered her up—it had given us all the much needed slap of clarity. 

Everyone looked at me. I shrugged. “She’s not wrong. We have absolutely no way to get it.”

“And what if it’s gone?” Lance asked. “What if that’s the reason no one’s ever gotten it? We shouldn’t let our eyes off it.”

“You’re welcome to wait here all night.” Art dug his hands into his pockets and lowered his chin into the collar of his jacket. He didn’t have a pleasant buzz that kept the cold off him. 

“It’s the  _ Holy Grail _ . I have ten fingers—I can lose a few to frostbite.” 

“How are we getting through that ice? We’re gonna need to find the sword in the fucking stone next.”

I froze. Lance and Art kept chirping at each other. And the familiar glow flooded my world 

“Guys?” I whispered.

“Yeah?”

“You’re never going to believe what’s in the trees on the other side of the river.”


	4. Chapter 4

Gwen and Lance looked confused. 

Art didn’t wait to hear me out. He knew what he’d asked me to find, even if he hadn’t been serious. He took off across the river, as damn close to a sprint as he could manage with the calf-high snow and slick ice underneath.

“Art!” I yelled. I stumbled forward in his trail, trying my best to step where he’d already left footprints. “You don’t even know where it is without me!”

It didn’t matter; he wasn’t listening. He pushed on and on and didn’t stop until he reached the bank on the other side. I glanced back over my shoulder. Gwen and Lance were trailing along surprisingly well for how buzzed they had been twenty minutes ago.

Ahead of me, Art was pushing his way through the bare trees. He followed straight along the glowing path that only I could see—or, at least that I  _ thought _ only I could see. But maybe I was wrong. Art didn’t need me. He was making his own way with surprising accuracy. 

Around me, the night was quiet. When I moved past the blood pounding in my head, I could hear the wind washing over dry snow. A car raced along the road in the distance. The park, even though it was in the city, was still and silent and swallowed all the sound. There was only snow and ice and us and—

“The sword in the goddamn stone,” Art muttered. He was still panting, out of breath from his race across the river, when I reached him. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” But there it was, in front of me, in all its simple glory. A piece of metal sticking out of a rock the size of a couch. 

Art didn’t move. He stared at the smooth metal, catching the moonlight. The gilded hilt seemed to glow on its own accord. And the blade, as expected, stuck halfway out of the slab of rock.

“Holy shit,” Lance said, panting as he and Gwen caught up to us. “This night just got a whole lot weirder.”

“If it wasn’t weird enough already,” added Gwen. 

We stood there, in the night, the cold wind whipping around us. In the distance, through the trees, I could see the lights of office towers sparkling away. There was a certain sort of dissonance, looking at it all—a sword sticking out of a stone and the brutalist buildings and 1980s office towers on the horizon.

“Well,” Lance said as he scrambled up on the rock. “Might as well give it a try.” He spat in both his hands—I don’t know how he didn’t freeze—and with an overexaggerated motion, wrapped his hands around the end. He braced his boot against the base, tensed his muscles, and tugged with as much strength as he could put into the movement. Lance’s face twisted up with the strain and a bead of sweat trickled down his temple. The sword wiggled, only slightly. He moved round to the other side and wound up to pull again.

Lance shifted his weight and planted his foot on a patch of black ice. As he pulled again, his leg jerked out from underneath him and the momentum carried him forward, off the rock, and face first into the snow.

He rolled over howling with laughter. “Well? Anyone else up for it?” He asked from the ground. “Give it a try, Gwen.”

Gwen rolled her eyes, but smiled. She hopped onto the stone and eyed the sword carefully. “Is this really it?”

Lance laughed without looking up. “You tell me—you’re the history major.”

“It’s supposed to be a legend,” she said. “We don’t exactly study that in class.”

“But there’s usually some truth in legend,” I countered. “I mean, why would they exist otherwise?”

“That might be true,” Art chimed in, “but how does Excalibur end up in Edmonton?”

“The same way the Holy Grail does,” Gwen mumbled back. She planted her feet, carefully stepping around the spot of slick ice, and wrapped her mittened-hands around the hilt of the sword. 

“Here we go,” she said and screwed her face up in concentration. Her arms shook as she pulled on the sword. It wiggled, again, but didn’t move.

“Well,” Lance said. He brushed a stray bit of snow away from his jeans. “That would’ve been embarrassing if you got it and I didn’t. I mean, I’m sure I loosened it up, though.”

Gwen rolled her eyes as she jumped back down into the snow. “You try, Mark.”

“Oh, no, I’m not really one—” 

_ THUNK. _

A dull pressure hit my back and then slipped away. I reached my hand back to brush whatever it was away. 

And another snowball smacked into the back of my jacket.

“ _ Lance. _ ”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Lance said, balling up another weapon. “You’ve got to at least give it a try.” 

“Fine,” I grumbled. I pulled my gloves off—I didn’t want my hands slipping—and cursed as the cold air stung my bare knuckles.

“One, two, three!” Lance yelled with too much enthusiasm. Maybe we were all still a little too buzzed for all this. 

But still I pulled. It barely inched in the rock. “Mystery solved,” I said. I really hadn’t expected anything otherwise. 

Lance launched a snowball at Art, who easily stepped out of the way. “Your turn,” he said.

Art frowned. I knew him well enough to see when something was worrying him—there was always that line that folded next to his eyebrow. But he wasn’t avoiding it in the same way I tried to avoid it. Was afraid something  _ would _ happen? Not that something wouldn’t?

“Give it a go,” I urged. He looked at me all deer-in-the-headlights. “It’ll be fine.”

Art stepped onto the stone. He pulled his hands out from the warmth of his pockets and wrapped them around the golden hilt. I held my breath deep in my chest and I think Art did the same. He rooted his feet against the ground, tensed his muscles, and put all his force into his pull.

Excalibur refused to budge.

All of Art’s momentum was suddenly misplaced—he’d clearly expected it to come loose. Instead of lifting the sword into the air, he careened back into the snow. His ass broke his fall. “Shit.” He rubbed his head. 

Lance began to howl with laughter again, but only for a moment. He stopped, as quickly as he had started, his face looking as if the blood had rushed away. “Oh fuck,” he muttered. He stumbled a few steps away, braced himself against a tree, and puked into the snow. 

He wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve and lifted his head. “I’m fine,” he said, his words slurring together. “I’ll rally.” 

“Sure you will,” Gwen said and went to his side, helping him find his balance. “Not to be a downer, but I think it might be time to head back.” 

“Nooooo,” protested Lance. 

I glanced from him to Gwen to Art, who was getting to his feet. “I think that’s our best choice for now.” I shrugged. “I don’t see how anything is gonna change tonight.”

“Agreed,” said Art. He brushed himself off. “And you all owe me some warm food on the way back after this shit.” 

“We’ll come back tomorrow,” I said to assure myself more than anyone else. “They’ll still be there. They have to be.”

They all nodded. And stood there. What was there to say to sum up what had happened tonight? 

The wind howled in my ears; I shivered and shrank into my jacket. Times like this, it felt as if the world was empty. As if there wasn’t a city waiting for us up ahead on the top of the banks. As if it were only us, and the snow, and the sword. 

And, maybe in some ways, I was right. 

#

I woke to a pounding head and sweat pooled around my neck. On top of it all, there was something awful of a crick in my neck; my head had wormed its way into a divet in the couch overnight. “Ugh.”

“You finally awake?” 

I cracked my eye open to see Art, fully dressed, making coffee in his kitchen. His apartment was easily the nicest out of all of our: the counters in his kitchen were dark granite; a gas fire flickered in a sleek black and glass case; lofty floor to ceiling windows lined the south wall. From the height, I could easily see a large leg of the river valley twist next to the city.

“Barely,” I mumbled and stretched like a cat as I pulled myself off the couch. The waistband of my jeans dug into my back. My button down shirt wrinkled overnight, and it smelled too much like beer and sweat for Sunday morning.

Art handed me a cup of coffee without saying anything. 

“I owe you one.”

“You owe me several,” he said as he sat down with his mug at the island. He turned to his macbook and started to type something in, his face twisted in concentration. I waited for him to say something. For a hint of his plan.

He said nothing. Art just kept typing away and drinking his coffee. That was something he did sometimes—got so wrapped up in his own plan that he didn’t look up. 

I sipped the coffee. It singed the end of my tongue but it was really good, at least. “Well?” I said.

Art looked up. “Well, what?”

“Are you kidding me? You’re just going to act like nothing happened.”

He stopped working and stared at me. “Nothing  _ did _ happen. And I have to study for my accounting final.”

I walked over to him—slowly, wincing as I moved my head—and set my mug down. “You’re joking. You’ve got to be if you’re gonna pretend that last night was nothing.”

“We can’t do anything about it! That swords gonna stay there. We can’t get it. How is that any different now than last night?”

I paused. We  _ didn’t  _ actually have any way to get it. What would we do? Get a jack hammer? A stick of dynamite? The sword was stuck halfway into a rock the size of my dorm bed and the grail was at the bottom of the river under a foot of ice. “I don’t know,” I admitted.

“See,” he replied. He turned back to his assignment.

“That doesn’t mean we should give up, though. I’ll text everyone, we’ll come up with something.”

Art sighed in frustration. “This... this is stupid. We can’t spend the weekend running around the city. It’s probably not even real.”

“It  _ is _ .”

He looked at me.

“I can  _ feel _ it.” I waited for a moment and hoped that it would sink in. “I think you can feel it too.” 

Art didn’t reply. His eyes didn’t meet mine anymore—he was staring out the window.  _ Ah _ . Was that it? Was he scared too? There was certain uncertainty about it all. Something in my gut started to twist when I thought about it; it couldn’t be a coincidence that the Holy Grail and the sword in the stone were down by the river. They were there for a reason, even if the reason was just to hide them away. 

And the more that I thought about it, the more the pit started to harden in my gut. And I was fairly certain it wasn’t just on account of my hangover. Something, some deep seated intuition, was nudging me. Something was saying  _ danger ahead.  _ A cool jolt ripped through my spine and spread to my limbs. 

I shook my head. “Whatever this means,” I said, “we can figure it out later. We’ve got to get it first.” And that much was true. 

Art looked at me. Wrapped up in his knit sweater, he didn’t seem much like he was in the mood for adventure. 

“Come on,” I begged. “There’s something cool happening here.”  _ Something dangerous too. _ “We can’t sit on the sidelines.”

“I don’t know…”

“When will we get this chance again? At least tag along.”

“I don’t want to fail this class.” Art turned back to his computer. His fingers hovered over the keys, but he didn’t type anything.

“Okay, Art. Listen.” I leaned in closer. “I promise you, this will be fun, alright? You’re the one who dragged me out last night. I’m doing the same today. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Art stared at his screen for a moment. “Alright,” he finally said with a sigh. 

I pumped my first. A reluctant agreement was still an agreement. 

“But I can’t stay too long—I really do have to study.  _ And  _ you’re paying me for gas.”

#

An hour later (and after I’d showered away the layer of sweat and grime and popped some ibuprofen to dull my headache), we pulled into the street outside Lance’s place. A few cars were still parked outside—stragglers who had crashed there last night. The sidewalk was half buried under a fresh layer of snow.

Gwen answered the door when Art knocked. Her pale face was tinged with green and her curly blonde hair twisted into a messy bun. She’d had a rougher night than I’d thought too, apparently. As she turned, I realized that the oversized athletic sweatshirt she was wearing was one of Lance’s.

“Oh,” Art said as he hovered by the door, not making any move to go inside. “Hey, Gwen.”

_ Seriously?  _ Art could try a little harder to sound less like a hurt puppy. 

She smiled weakly. “Come in guys.”

At the kitchen table, Lance was slumped forward with his head in his hands and a bottle of water next to him. “Just be quiet please,” he mumbled.

“Bit of a hangover?” Art asked.

Lance scoffed. “That’s an understatement. I’m just praying for the tylenol to kick in.”

Gwen sat down next to him and winced. “We’re moving a bit slow this morning.”

Lance hummed in agreement. “I texted Percy. He’s coming over in a bit. And he’s bringing food.”

“It better be hot and greasy,” Gwen said.

“Don’t worry, I made him promise that it would be.” Lance sat up a bit and his face split into a wide grin. “Then we can get this thing going.”

Art cleared his throat in the annoying unsure way he did whenever he was about to disagree with someone. “Are we really sure about this?”

“Yes.”  _ No. _

“We can’t  _ not  _ do anything,” Lance countered.

“Mark,” Gwen said. “You sure you’ve found the real Holy Grail?”

Everything froze for a fraction of a second. And the familiar flow rose before me again. That winding path that would show me the way and— “Ah, fuck.” 

The glow made no sense—it never failed to show me an object, save the things I could just never find, no matter how much I tried to. Once the glow started, it always showed me the way. But now? It just… ended. Like that. Like it had been sliced off somewhere in the middle.

Art shot me a glance over his shoulder. “What?”

“It’s definitely the real thing,” I said. “And I think someone got to it first.”


End file.
